


Winter Soldiers

by selstarry



Category: Sān guó yǎn yì | Romance of the Three Kingdoms - All Media Types, Sān guó | Three Kingdoms (TV 2010), Three Kingdoms History & Adaptations - All Media Types
Genre: Conquest of Zhongyuan, Gen, Ghosts, Shu-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selstarry/pseuds/selstarry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zhuge Liang dreams of the dead of Shu.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Soldiers

Guan Yu is the first to appear in Zhuge Liang's dreams, not so long after the fall of Jing Province, when winter has yet to soften into spring.

The dream is set in Zhuge Liang's office chamber, as it will be for the next fifteen years; every detail is outwardly identical to the real room, from the faded ink stains on his desk to the view outside his window, but the lamps flicker and sway though the night air is still and the doors are shut.

Zhuge Liang is seated at his desk. Guan Yu is across the room from him, a tall smudge of shadow within shadows. He doesn't speak or approach, but simply stands there, half-hidden.

"Yunchang," Zhuge Liang greets, unperturbed. He's called on the reputation of spirits and ghosts often enough; if they ever chose to show themselves to one of the living, he supposes he would be a fair enough choice.

Guan Yu remains where he is, bending to none of the courtesies he'd grudgingly observed while alive. "I am not waiting for you," he says coldly.

"If you seek my lord, you're in the wrong room."

"I've paid my visit to Eldest Brother already. I saw no need to disturb his rest further; all that is left for me is the wait."

Zhuge Liang knows, unfortunately, what he's referring to. "You seem confident in your influence."

"Should I not be?" It's less of a question than a terse dismissal of the alternate answer, and there's a certain finality that rings about his words.

"We will see," Zhuge Liang says, softly.

They say no more for the rest of the night. Zhuge Liang sits, and thinks, and wakes not long afterwards, before the first light of dawn has warmed the eastern sky. He wastes no time in returning to his office; his workload has never been light, but in the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Jing Province, there's a stack of new crises on his desk every morning. The lamp flames in his office cant a little at his entrance, but return to their steady, placid glow.

 

The servant looks surprised at Zhuge Liang's request, but retrieves the weiqi board and pieces from storage the next evening. He runs his hand through the black pieces, realizing with a pang that it's been years since Liu Bei last touched them. That had been before Hanzhong, before his lord declared himself king, before Guan Yu lost Jing Province. They've both been too busy and too often apart to play.

Abruptly, he turns from the board and returns to his work until the lamps burn low.

Guan Yu has barely shifted from his spot the previous night, but once Zhuge Liang sets up the weiqi board, he takes it as an invitation to join him. The lamps' light reveal his face to be outwardly young, younger than Zhuge Liang had opportunity to see him in life, but his eyes are old and bitter.

He takes the white pieces, which Zhuge Liang had purposefully placed on the farther side of the desk; a piece of petty sentiment to act upon, perhaps, but he keeps the black pieces for himself.

As Zhuge Liang planned, Guan Yu loses some of his wary, tense air as the game begins. It's harder to give the impression of a slow, hard-fought victory than to crush him outright, and Zhuge Liang allows the first few minutes to pass in silence as he sets up his careful foundation.

He begins his questioning soon enough; the night for him has always been short, and he plans to spend it efficiently. His words are as meticulously strategic as his moves, so that a veneer of almost friendly conversation smoothes over the interrogation at its underlying heart.

Of course, there's a limit to how subtly one can ask another of how he died.

Guan Yu smiles contemptuously when he realizes where the conversation is leading. "And what purpose would this knowledge serve for you?"

"Cao Cao and Sun Quan have already led a spirited round of playacting to divert blame for your death; I'd think that it would matter equally whether you died in battle or by execution."

"And perhaps give you a much-needed advantage in persuading Eldest Brother not to attack Wu." Guan Yu says, amused. "But do you really think that you can use a dream as evidence, as much as you've called upon the name of divine intervention in the past?"

"Perhaps not, but all information is useful, after all. Know thyself and know thine enemy," Zhuge Liang says, with a disarming smile, even though he knows only too well that Guan Yu is the enemy in all seriousness, one that will be all the harder to defeat now that he's dead.

But Guan Yu does tell him, in the end; Zhuge Liang's words have appealed to his pride, remind him that he holds such influence and vital information and has forced his opponent to humbly ask, and it loosens his tongue like wine. Zhuge Liang knows better than to conflate talkativeness with honesty, but it is still sweeter yet a victory than the one on the weiqi board.

 

The dreams come only rarely after that. Zhuge Liang doesn't mind; he often wakes up from them more tired than he'd been before he fell asleep. Though, of course, he's used to operating under every form of exhaustion by this point.

He knows that, underneath the outward truce in both dream and reality, the hatred is only dormant, not dead yet for all his skills, and bides its time restlessly. Guan Yu will play weiqi with him and answer his questions and even make the occasional civil small talk, but his deliberate niceties only serve to highlight the depth of contempt and resentment underneath. But he would tolerate even the company of one he despises, Zhuge Liang thinks, as a respite from waiting in the darkness alone.

And Zhuge Liang, though he plays the role of an attentive host in the dreams, expends many a waking hour into ensuring that Guan Yu will have many years to wait-- delay war at the minimum, prevent it entirely if he can, if such a task is even possible.

Liu Bei does not stray from his chosen path easily; he would sooner cut off an arm than abandon his course altogether. But even knowing that, Zhuge Liang had dared to think he was winning.

Zhang Fei joins Guan Yu in the dream the summer Liu Bei's avenging army rides east, leaving only dust where the hosts had camped outside the walls of Chengdu. He glowers from the sidelines at the weiqi game, but his expression changes to satisfaction when he notices the military maps and deployment charts tucked to the side, and changes again to triumph when, upon closer inspection, he realizes that Zhuge Liang hadn't been consulted on any of it.

"Justice has been done," Zhang Fei laughs to Guan Yu.

"Did you ever doubt our brother? He would never shirk duty or oath--" Guan Yu shifts his cool gaze to Zhuge Liang sitting opposite him-- "no matter what less honorable men may counsel."

Zhang Fei's laugh holds a harsher edge this time. "The Prime Minister did plenty of counseling, I know that!"

"And I regret only that it wasn't enough," Zhuge Liang interjects, setting his next black piece on the board. "That justice for two people has been placed above the future of the nation."

Guan Yu smirks. "Noble words, but perhaps what you truly mean is closer to that Eldest Brother places justice for us above pleasing you."

"Your pretty words and pretty face didn't count for much in the end, did it?" Zhang Fei joins in, sensing blood to be drawn. "Would Eldest Brother have fought a war to avenge you?"

"No, he wouldn't," Zhuge Liang says, his composure like iron. "But then again, he'd never need to."

For once, he finds himself playing weiqi with no regard to being diplomatic or patient or kind. In the span of the brief summer's night, the white pieces pile up at the board's side again and again and again, like the bones of soldiers.

The next year, in the fourth month, Zhuge Liang finds himself alone in the dream, and knows that Guan Yu and Zhang Fei have gone to accompany their lord and brother. He sits in the empty, dim office for the span of the night, silently planning for the future as always, because it remains to him to live.

The weiqi board goes into storage when he returns to Chengdu. He never finds occasion to touch it again.

 

Ma Su, in death as in dying, does not linger -- a small kindness for both of them. "Prime Minister," he says simply, almost apologetically, that night. He bows deeply one last time, student to teacher, and subordinate to commander, then leaves. The open doorway reveals a brief glimpse of outside, of the Chengdu night -- by this point, no more a home than his camps and captured cities, Zhuge Liang thinks. Then the doors swing shut, cutting off the view along with his stray thoughts.

He plans in the flickering darkness, wakes, returns to planning. The boundaries blur between his days and nights.

 

There's an unreality to hearing of Zhao Yun's death. The last time Zhuge Liang had seen him, he'd seemed as hale and fierce and strong as he'd been twenty years ago.

It takes the dream to correct his illusions. The Zhao Yun standing in his office is a tiger in his prime, the effect heightened by the play of shadows and orange lamplight across his unlined features and gray-free hair.

Only then is Zhuge Liang truly, painfully struck aware of how long it must have been, to fade Zilong from a tiger to a tiger's shadow. He wonders how he could have ever mistaken the two for the same thing. Or, maybe, Zilong had seemed so untouched by age simply in comparison to Zhuge Liang himself.

He had been the youngest of Liu Bei's old guard, and yet, already, he feels more than his share of years coiling about his bones like persistent ghosts. The youngest, and now the last, and the brittle ache that pervades his body warns him that he, too, is running out of time.

But then Zhao Yun steps forwards, hesitantly, and the reassurance of his familiar warmth banishes Zhuge Liang's dark thoughts like the touch of summer wind on snow. He silently leans against Zilong's solid frame, forehead resting against his friend's shoulder; for a little while longer, until he wakes, he will not have to face the world alone.

 

When the dream comes to him from then on, Zhao Yun is always there, waiting.

At first, Zhuge Liang welcomes Zilong's presence as a rare and welcome mercy after waking hours that know little of it. His presence is a comfort, a refuge. Death and long acquaintance elevate him beyond the mind games that mire Zhuge Liang's days; this is the only time he has when all his plans can be revealed, and all his thoughts can be voiced, if he so chooses. 

"How reliable should I expect the supply lines to be this campaign?" he can ask Zilong openly. "How much credibility should I give to my agents' reports from Wei?" These are not Zilong's areas of expertise, and he expects no reply, but there is something to be gained in airing concerns he must keep hidden from his subordinates and rivals.

And his words inevitably circle around one topic, one that he finds himself uncomfortably reluctant to voice directly. "How can I prepare my subordinates for the future without sacrificing more efficiency than I can afford on this campaign? Can my successors manage the the transportation system as it stands?" Implied, but not spoken, is: _I don't have enough_ time.

He runs through one one line of thought after another, all interlinked, a web of past and present and future. And him at the center, always, entombed within the strands. 

Zilong realizes this, Zhuge Liang knows. His old friend may be kind enough to say nothing, but the sympathy in his eyes is turning to pity. Somehow that hurts more than any words could.

The dream is no longer a comfort to Zhuge Liang, but a new test of endurance, one that leaves a cold weight in his chest when he wakes. He sleeps as little as he dares; when the dreams finally cease, he doesn't know if it means that Zilong has granted him this respite, or if he's simply too tired to dream anymore.

 

"Kongming."

Zhuge Liang opens his eyes once more than he expected to. "My lord," he says, voice catching.

He stands, shaky as memories from half a lifetime ago come flooding back. Liu Bei wears the same plain robes as he did on that day in Longzhong, even, the fabric rough underneath his hands as his lord moves to support him. And his face is the same; Zhuge Liang wonders why he chose not to return to a much younger physical appearance like his brothers, and the answer, when he realizes, blurs his eyes with tears.

"My lord," he says again as Liu Bei guides him toward the doors, the syllables rough from disuse. "I've missed you."

There's a gentle sadness in Liu Bei's eyes as they reach the threshold, but also warmth, and hope. "Then will you come with me one last time?" he asks.

As before, as always, Zhuge Liang's answer is _yes_.

They cross the threshold hand in hand.


End file.
